‘W’ is for ‘Armed Conflict,’ or, ‘Escalating Hostilities,’ or, ‘Police Action,’ or... what's the word...?
First he heard them. They were late, two hours since dawn,
before crawling out of their holes, camps all hidden under the palm canopies,
all out of sight. Three days of failed attempts to siege his position and their
smartest decision had been to sleep where his crew couldn’t see them. The
humans came groaning, and rustling over brush they couldn’t name, and
scratching at infections they’d never seen, and hid. Hees heard them hide in
the great walls of foliage below his hill, and glanced three eyes down into
their pocket of the valley, at the lip of the only slope leading up the only
high ground for a quarter of a league. It was a bump in the terrain compared to
the canyon walls east and west, but it was the only foothold available if your
empire wanted to siege across to the Uncanny
Valley’s western cliffs.
Hees remained at the precipice, flies crawling through his
hair and ears, and raised up the sauropod leg that ought to have been his
breakfast. It sweated more than he did, and he smeared it across the trees
around him, painting their bark with gore. So did Matou and Yaw’s crews, and Alpee
and Hamam, even though they’d been up the entire night butchering. Further up
they burned pyres of the stuff, dispersing a stench unbearable even with gum stuffed
in his nostrils, and he glanced between all the panting and painting triclopes,
then up to the southern sky. Only the faintest hint of smoke over the pissavas,
and no rumbling yet. Doa was a day late.
Ten, then fifteen, then eighteen green and yellow uniforms in
the basin below, their petty two-eyed lives leading them to believe they were
hidden amid tall brush. The Empire’s soldiers wore trousers and sleeves, not at
all suitable to this boiling climate. Yet they judged Hees and his crew as
savages for painting the trees with carrion in their underwear. He heard them.
They had the same number of ears as Hees and yet seemed to think he couldn’t
hear them.
“Superstitious…”
“What is that smell?”
“I can hit that one.”
And the creak of a bowstring. Two bow-strings amid the
leaves, distinct while attempting harmony. He prayed south for Doa to hurry,
and for the smoke to hasten.
He jerked the stump of leg up and caught the arrows with two
wet thucks. Then the foliage below parted, from the ground to the canopies, and
his three eyes drowned in hundreds of humans. They unleashed a swarm of gilded arrows,
glittering as they sailed up the slope. Hees rolled inland, but Yaw was struck
in the shoulder, and their crews cried, and everyone reeled from the slope,
leaving access bare. Into that nudity rushed flanks of humans behind tower
shields, beating rhythms with spears, beneath the watch of their archers in the
trees above.
Hees fell to the pens, but husky Alpee was already there,
yanking an arrow from the wood and drawing its head to slash the bonds. Hees
yanked open the cage and hollered inward, two heavy hoots, and their theropods
spilled out. Three days of siege and they knew where they were allowed to
feast. Twice as long as he was tall and tails erect behind them, swaying and sibilating,
snapping their fangs. He spanked one in the hindquarters and snatched its
head-crest, riding along its side back to the cusp of their ridge. The monolophosaurs
didn’t care about archers, and they considered tower shields good landing
spots. Hees had to release as his steed leapt off the ridge and on top of three
humans, craning its jaws over their crumpling shields to gnash at them.
 |
| "Monolophosaurus" by Michael Skepnick |
The monolophosaurs didn’t care about archers, but they felt
pain, and they soon shrieked with it. The ground palpitated as the Empire’s
specialized archers peeled through, spitting lightning up the hill. Three days
their wizard snipers had finally arrived. All Hees could do was swing his
sauropod arm and hurl it over the ledge, smashing one of the bastards in the
face and painting him with gore.
The throw earned his perch a blast from their snipers, and
the ground beneath his feet exploded. Alpee’s crew had to catch him, and two
looked in his eyes, and he blinked assurance that he was alive, and they dumped
him in the ferns. Good men and women, one and all.
His triclopes went to the ledge with javelins, and loosed
the trebuchets, made from trees and launching stumps. He felt their impacts in
his guts, a satisfying alternative to breakfast, until one half-fossilized
stump froze still in the air. Then another, and a third, an insult to all
triclopes, as those wizard snipers caught projectiles. In the next instant,
they reversed and plummeted into the ranks of triclopes.
He inhaled in shock, and the stench of carrion painted everywhere
made him retch. He must have wretched south, for several strings of smoke
greeted his watering eyes, thick in the nearground.
“About time,” he muttered, rubbing a fist to his lips. A
three-eyed banner waved briefly above the pissavas before it was ditched, and
its triclopic owner ran for his life from his cattle. Doa. Three days was long
for her to find and goad automatons into chasing her crew, but this close, autos
would stay for the smell of biologicals.
Hees backed from the slopes, tugging at anyone near him, and
hollering for them to fall back. The first Auto Drones punched through the tree-line,
perfect spheres of rust and steel, smoke billowing their asses. They rolled at
him, but he had high ground, and so they rolled at the Empire of Gold and Jade
first. Wizard snipers sprayed them with lightning, and some drones stuttered, but
were immediately climbed over by their kin. Dozens climbing upon dozens, fiery
ports opening in their hulls, sucking in spears and arms and bodies.
Some Auto Drones ignored the feast of humans, spiraling
spherical bodies up the slope and heading immediately for his fragrant high
ground. They’d probably never smelled anything so appealing, and he left it to
them. Already the jungle trembled for the crane arms of greater automatons, Mammoths
and worse tearing near, who would soon impregnate this entire league of the Uncanny Valley. No one was going to be able to
cross it. What a shame. He saluted to the scurrying humans before departing to
find and congratulate Doa.
